Controlled Chaos

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 12:38 PM) I went back to 2002 with that, avoiding Rowand's true rookie year. During that time, Jones had 3448 at bats, Rowand had 2541, so for a fair projection Rowand has had only 75% of the AB's that Jones has had. Jones's Numbers followed by Rowands: HR 89/218 RBI: 652/327 BB: 423/146 K's: 477/784 These numbers are yearly averages, not weighted by # of at bats because frankly I'm too lazy?: Average: .258/.282 OBP: .345/.335 OPS: .851/.791 Rowand gets more hits than Jones. However, Rowand walks much less, even accounting for the fewer AB's. Jones does K more, but for the same number of AB's Rowand would come up with probably 20 fewer k's per season on average. Jones takes more walks, and in terms of OBP, Jones takes more than enough walks for his OBP to be higher than Rowand's despite the 30+ points of batting average. And slugging is no contest: Jones homers at 2x the rate of Rowand, drives in 50% more runs/year, and puts up similar numbers of doubles. Actually was looking for a comparison to Hunter.

Can anyone with more statistical savy than myself, compare Rowand to Hunter over the past 5 years. I thought I saw something like this on Chicago Tribune Live...and the stats were pretty comparable??

This deal is back...Hurry if interested http://www.steepandcheap.com/

QUOTE(DrunkBomber @ Nov 26, 2007 -> 08:05 PM) I was hoping I could get all the way through and no one would put it so I could. Also, no Die Hard? Lame Die Hard is usually my suggestion when the wife wants to watch a Xmas movie. Needless to say, we usually end up watching Christmas Vacation.

Congrats Steff!!!!!!!

Well I got my 37" TV ahead of time and did the PA on Friday, but I guess that counts as a Black Friday purchase. We didn't get up super early, but went to the mall around 7:00 am. Got a couple of those "perfect pillows" the memory foam ones $19.99 Reg $80.00. Got some nice sheets for $30.00 Reg $100.00. Espresso machine for the mother in law $18.88 Reg $59.99. Got some clothes and pj's for our daughter. Everything was 60% off. Got some other little knick knacks as well. I guess the waiting in line all night for deals is a bit extreme, but as far as just going out on BF...I don't think it's as bad as people make it seem. It's just like going to the mall a couple weeks before xmas. The big thing is don't always go to the first line you see. I took the stuff I was going to buy upstairs and paid at like a purse section....there was only one person at the register and she was buying a purse. The other store there were 3 people in line, but 4 registers open....so that went super fast. There are some great deals to be had if you go.

By the way...thie Price Adjustment worked like a charm. The Customer service lady was like...wow i didn't think that would go through...I'm like I did

QUOTE(mreye @ Nov 20, 2007 -> 08:05 AM) The Wiggles aren't so bad. Not as abd as the Teletubbies and Barney. My kids like Tom and Jerry too. And The Jetsons, The Smurfs, The Snorks, Cartoon Olympics, all that good stuff Boomerang shows. My daughter loves Barney. You guys need another pet peeve...how about me walking down the street singing some stupid fricken barney song. It's happened.......MORE THAN ONCE!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure I'm on someones peeve list.

This will be one of the sales on Black Friday at Target. If you're interested, you can go pick one up today or tomorrow and then bring the receipt Friday or Saturday and get a Price Adjustment. I've spoken to numerous managers and also have read of tons of other people receiving back the same info from corporate. They will do price adjustments on their Friday sales. Save youself the madness of Friday if you're looking for a good LCD deal. http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html?asin=...amp;LNM=Primary This was a special online price that they put out last night and it sold out right away, but your local stores probably still have some they can sell before Friday.

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 03:37 PM) So you guys can vouch for the site's legitimacy? I'm sort of worried about getting ripped off. I got both my oakleys right away. Things went smooth.

Teacher pay hikes more than they seem By Emily Krone When administrators and union leaders reached a deal on a teachers contract, the September announcement trumpeted across-the-board raises of 3.8 percent. Elgin Area School District U-46 teachers promptly rejected the deal. The 3.8 percent was not the chief problem -- class size, teacher evaluations and future pay raises together sunk the deal. Still, the 3.8 percent raise was cited in most discussions about the proposal -- and it wasn't what it seemed. Most teachers would have received more than 3.8 percent. A first-year teacher who earned eight semester credit hours during the year would have ended up with a 14 percent pay raise -- more than three times the advertised rate. This discrepancy between what was reported as the pay increase and what was actually in the deal is typical of most contract negotiations. The recent haggling in the state's largest high school district is a case in point. Teachers in Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 were on the verge of a strike until the school board agreed Thursday to tack an additional 0.3 percentage point onto their raises for next school year, the second year of a two-year contract. The school board had offered a 2.5 percent increase, but teachers were holding out for a second-year raise tied to the rate of inflation, now 2.8 percent. Though teachers were willing to walk the picket line over the difference between 2.5 and 2.8 percent, neither figure reflects the raises most teachers actually will receive. The deal will afford nearly three-fourths of teachers raises from 6.2 percent to 8.5 percent this year and between 4.9 percent and 7.9 percent in the second year. Three raises … Teachers typically can receive three types of raises -- and some receive all three in a single year. Still, teachers -- and union officials -- usually only mention one of the three when talking about pay increases. The type of raise most commonly reported during negotiations is the across-the-board base pay increase. In U-46, the base pay raise was set at 3.8 percent in the first year of the tentative deal. In the second and third years, raises would be equal to the Consumer Price Index plus one percentage point. In District 211, the raises will be 3.25 percent in the first year and equal to the Consumer Price Index in the second. The second type of raise is called a step increase. Most teachers also receive this raise, which is figured on top of the base raise. Step increases are for experience, and teachers typically receive them every year for the first 20- or 30-odd years of their careers, depending on the district. In some districts, though, teachers who don't go beyond a bachelor's degree will stop earning step increases after less than 10 years. On the other hand, some districts will provide additional "longevity" raises, on top of the base pay raises, for teachers who no longer receive step increases. A District 211 teacher just starting out will get the 3.25 percent base pay raise -- and a step raise of 5.2 percent -- for a total raise of 8.5 percent. A teacher nearing the end of her career will get the 3.25 percent base pay bump and a step increase of 2.9 percent, for a total raise of 6.2 percent. The third type of raise is the pay bump most districts give for taking advanced coursework. These "lane" raises can be worth thousands of dollars, but often are discounted by teachers, in part because teachers don't earn them every year. In District 211, a first-year teacher who earns a master's degree would receive a pay bump of about 10 percent for graduating to a new lane. District 211 officials have not released estimates of how much the average teacher would receive when you factor in base, step and lane increases under the new pact. So the actual teacher raises in District 211 exceed even the district's ranges of 6.2 percent to 8.5 percent this year and 4.9 percent to 7.9 percent next year -- because the lane increases are not accounted for. The only teachers actually limited to just the publicized 3.25 percent raise are those who have exhausted all step and lane opportunities and make more than $100,000. U-46 officials combined the cost of step and lane increases, projecting the two raises would cost the district an additional 1.9 percent. With base, step and lane increases, then, the typical U-46 teacher would have received a 5.7 percent pay raise in the first year of the tentative deal the union rejected. Published figures of 6.1 percent include increases in retirement payments. … & they all count Districts must take all three raises into account when calculating the true cost of a contract, Fox Lake Elementary District 114 Superintendent John Donavan said. Otherwise, he said, "you have a real hard time (balancing) your budget and a real hard time conveying to the public what that is going to cost you." The challenge, Donavan said, is persuading teachers unions to account for all three raises when reporting salary increases. "Some teachers associations don't like to view step increases as part of the annual salary increase. They just like to look at that as money they are due no matter what," said Donavan, stressing that's not the case with his district's union. When negotiating a contract, most districts do account for the costs of base, step and lane raises, U-46 Chief Financial Officer John Prince said. "But the question is, do they reflect those in the stated raises?" Prince said. Prince projects the cost of step, lane and base-pay increases, using data from previous years to determine which teachers are likely to earn more credit hours. Other districts in the midst of contract negotiations forecast the cost of step and base increases, but not lane changes, since those are more difficult to predict. The most recent contract for West Aurora Unit District 129, for example, affords base raises of 2 percent and average step raises of 2.2 percent. The district did not calculate how much lane raises were worth, spokesman Mike Chapin said. Other districts simply count the overall cost of the contract to the district. When McHenry Elementary District 15 negotiated its new teacher contract, the main issue on the table was how much "new money" the district would provide to teachers, Chief Financial Officer Allan Smigiel said. But the cost to a district is not commensurate with what the average teacher receives. If a district has a number of teachers retiring who have reached the top of the pay scale, overall salary increases could appear deceptively modest. In District 214, for example, a new contract called for base salary raises of 4.25 percent for all teachers. But with 80 teachers retiring, the overall cost of the new contract was only 2.5 percent. The district couldn't immediately estimate the value of average step and lane increases. "Our matrix is so large and teachers are moving not only across but up," District 214 spokeswoman Venetian Miles said. "It's really difficult to calculate what average raises would be." Community Unit District 300 Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Crates said there's no one right way to report teacher raises. Still, she said, her district chose to calculate the cost of lane, step and base pay raises together. "We included it all, for transparency," Crates said. "It all depends on the culture of negotiations … and on what group you're talking to."

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 10:09 AM) I have said it before, and I will say it again. If you REALLY want to get people out of their cars, you HAVE to give them an alternative mode of transportation. The decay of the Chicago mass transit system, and the neglect of mass transit in the US is a joke. It sends the message that all of the talk about going green, is just talk. This statement reminds me of the movie Singles. I'm not sure why I even remember that, but the dude says something along these lines.

Hey ya'll. It's a good time of the year to get that oven going and do some ribs up for the football games!!! I will add one more thing to the mix. When removing the membrane from the back. I used a spoon last time instead of a knife and it worked out great. Then once you get a little corner up, grab it with a paper towel and pull it off.

Anyone hear from Nuke lately??? Hope all is well!!

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 09:19 AM) I know you will hate me for saying this but come on...you live in Harvard Illinois. Kid leashes seem a bit excessive to me especially in rural America. Who the hell are you to judge how he parents his kids?

back on topic...and this should stir things up a little....but talking or even worse texting while driving. I know most people think they are, but trust me...you are not the same driver on the phone as you are off the phone. Not too mention there are already bad drivers out there, put them on the phone and we're looking at disaster. Also, and this has to do with the phone as well...I absolutely dread getting behind anyone at an arrow light anymore. I would say at least 50% of the time some person isn't paying attention. That percentage grows with more people in front of you. It is probably my absolute biggest pet peeve. I don't care if you are a slow driver...fine everyone is different...I just want you to go when the light changes. You should be doing one thing at a red light and that's watching for it to turn green.

My daughter is 18 months and we don't own a harness, but I'm absolutely not against getting one. If you're at an airport or a carnival/theme park or even a crowded mall during the holidays. I think it could be a lifesaver. I saw I guy with them on his two kids yesterday at Union Station. They were like little monkey backpacks and he had the tails. It's about safety and security first. I can especially see the need if its one parent with two little kids. How can a parent take their 2 kids say downtown during xmas to see the tree and windows and stuff. It's not like kids want to stay in the stroller all the time. They want to walk. They also don't want to hold your hand all the time...they want to explore a little. I can see the stigma if a parent is just dragging their kid around with it, and I'm sure some do, but I've never seen them used like that.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Nov 8, 2007 -> 07:40 PM) The Champion is a really big anti-union site. It'd be better if the Champion attacked Illinois as a whole for being one of the worst states in the US in school economic disparities. Instead, it just becomes "Union=Bad" hilariousness. Two -- knowing their salaries, what is the cost of living in that area? I mean, simply just posting "OMG! THEY MAKE X!" is a bit disingenuous if one does not then couple that with the cost of living in the area. I'll stop now because this kind of stuff is a major pet peeve for me, not that CC posted it -- just the blowhards of the Champion web site which are a bunch of anti-union hacks. I know nothing about The Champion website, I just had that email sent to me and a lot of it made sense. The anti union thing didn't strike me as much as some of the numbers they posted did.

Any opinions? Anyone affected? I found this article pretty interesting. Teacher Unions and the New math: 20% is 10% By Bill Zettler Unbeknownst to me the CPI (Consumer Price Index) went up by over 20% the last 3 years. Although I checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they said 10% I read an ad in the Daily Herald on Sunday, November 4th from the teacher union at District 211 that said they were going on strike soon if they didn’t get big raises. In fact the ad says the teachers had agreed previously to limit increases to less than the CPI for the last 3 years and that’s why the strike was justified. So just to make sure I understood what the teacher union meant I decided to check what actually happened to District 211 teacher salaries over the 3 year period 2003-2006. What I found out was that the 554 teachers who worked at Dist. 211 for that 3 year period averaged 19.8% salary increases. Therefore it follows that the CPI must have been over 20% because the union’s ad in the Herald said they were working for increases less than the CPI. Therefore either the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the teachers union is wrong. Call me a cynic, but I believe the BLS. And by the way, 149 of those 554 teachers had increases in excess of $20,000, which doesn’t sound like a sacrifice to me. I wonder – how many readers of this article had their salaries increase by $20,000 over the last 3 years? The other teacher salary issue is Average Salary. That particular calculation is virtually meaningless when it comes to the parallel universe that is the Illinois Public School system. As an example I again refer to District 211. In 2006 the average teacher salary at 211 was $82,254 and in 2002 $85,438. Now do you really think that the teachers took a salary cut between 2002 and 2006? Of course not. The Average Salary figure is used by the unions because it is unrepresentative of the real increases being received by the teachers every year. The Teacher Retirement System (TRS), which tracks all salaries, states that the average year over year is 6.5%, which according to my 3-year spreadsheet (see here) is just about right. The reason the Average Salary is unrepresentative is because when $150,000/yr teachers retire they are replaced by younger teachers making perhaps $50,000/yr. In District 211’s case there were 3 teachers in 2006 that made more than $150,000: a Drivers Ed teacher, a Phys Ed teacher and an Auto repair teacher. So even though that $50,000 teacher had a raise of 6.5% the average actually goes down because of the $100,000 decrease. You will notice that neither the taxpayers nor the parents nor the students get any extra benefit from paying a $150,000 Drivers Ed teacher rather than a $50,000 one. The only people who benefit from this scheme are the teachers. What possible benefit accrues to the community when taxes are used to pay $150,000 for a service that should cost 1/3 of that amount? Why don’t we pay $50,000 for drivers ed and use the other $100,000 for other public purposes such as health care for poor kids? Keep in mind, in Dist 211, 319 out of 891 full-time employees made more than $100,000 and when they retire and are replaced by less expensive, but just as adequate, teachers it drives down the average. And of course you are not done paying after they retire. Teachers total pension payments during their retirement adds up to more than twice what they made when they taught. So you pay them when they work then you pay them even more for not working. In the case of the three $150,000 teachers above, total pension payout over their expected lifetimes, for all three combined, will exceed $12 million, not including health benefits which currently average about $4,000/yr. Again, wouldn’t the community as a whole be better served if we paid out say $5 million in pensions to these three teachers and used the other $7 million for homeless shelters and food pantries? To paraphrase the home-schooled Abe Lincoln, the Illinois Public schools are “of the teachers, by the teachers and for the teachers.” You have nothing to say about it. You write your check for the taxes and the union writes their check to the politicians. That’s how it works in Illinois. Posted November 6, 2007

QUOTE(mreye @ Nov 8, 2007 -> 09:59 AM) More walkers: The people you pass on the sidewalk and then they step in front of you at the "Don't Walk" sign only to have to pass them again. uggh...I hate those peeps! Another commuter one. Waiting for the train and everyone is kind of bunched up where the doors stop and then everyone starts filing in. Then here comes Mr/Ms important walking right past everyone and then just tries to merge in along the side at the door. HELLO.....Cutting in line is like one of the first things you learn not to do as a kid. What distorted twisted self serving version of reality do you live in that makes you think walking in front of 20 people is some how the correct thing to do?? I just don't get it.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Nov 8, 2007 -> 09:44 AM) I despise poodles. So like this would piss ya guys off then??

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Nov 7, 2007 -> 04:01 PM) Girls who take 3 hours to get ready and then just look like they applied 3 inches of makeup. Girls who need to put on makeup to go out to breakfast or a sporting event. People who use the word like every other word in a conversation. Guys who own tiny little dogs. I don't own a dog, so thankfully I'm in your good graces, but why is it a pet peeve of yours what someone else owns? That's a weird one for me. Most pet peeves affect you in some kind of way...

Oh man...if Juan gets on one of his hot streaks he can carry this team!

People who don't turn their shoulder when you're passing each other close. I figure I would knock around about 10 people just on my way to and from work. I always think that...like what would these people do if I just walked straight as well? Do I have a sign on my head that says...I will move so you can continue on your self righteous path unobstructed?? The one problem I have is probably 75% of the time it's women that do this and I don't want to bowl them over. I will say I retaliated once to a guy who was texting or reading something on his crackberry or something. He was walking straight at me, looking down...so I just kept walking straight as well. He never looked up so I moved a little so I wouldn't run him straight over and I only hit the side of him. The poor bastard almost went to the ground...his blackberry flew out of his hand and got kicked around a couple times. He was like whoops, I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention and I was like I know. I felt kinda bad and good at the same time. Sometimes when I have people walking right at me while they're having a convo with 3 other people and blocking the whole sidewalk I will just stop and let them run into me. I'm sorry, you can't walk 4 across downtown and have everyone just part like the red sea as you approach. The best is those people usually give me the dirty look. It's like look at the 9 feet you're taking up then look at the 1 foot you're giving me and you want me to make it 1/2 a foot?? Screw you lady!!!

QUOTE(mreye @ Nov 6, 2007 -> 11:22 AM) In that same group are the people that don't walk a straight line. You start to walk past them and they start "merging" left. So, you switch to the right and now they're going that way! yeah or anyone who tries to read the f***in paper/crackberry while walking or even worse text messaging while walking. Are you kidding me?? Are you in your own world...it's fricken rush hour. oh yeah...and this stuff still pisses me off http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20293